


My Enemy, Myself; Sympathy for the Devil - A Meta About Kylo Ren

by evilgrrl



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Analysis, Fascism, Meta, Nonfiction, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16031519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilgrrl/pseuds/evilgrrl
Summary: I see a lot of people accusing Kylo Ren of being a Nazi. This explains why they are wrong.





	My Enemy, Myself; Sympathy for the Devil - A Meta About Kylo Ren

My Enemy, My Self, or Sympathy for the Devil?

By evilgrrl, Kylo Ren apologist  
August 10, 2018

 

“Kylo Ren is a Nazi. Darth Vader is a Nazi. People who like them are romanticizing fascism.”

I hadn't actually realized everything was so cut and dried, but a lot of people seem to think so. 

“The Last Jedi was a massive disappointment and I think it is mainly because Rian Johnson isn't Jewish. He doesn't understand that First Order is a Nazi parallel and tries to make Kylo Ren look relatable. You cannot do that when he is representing fascism.”  
\- waltdisneyconfessions@tumblr

I hated Darth Vader when I watched Star Wars as a kid. Until I saw Return of the Jedi, I thought that he had been lying to Luke when he said that he was Luke's father. I never questioned how he became a villain. 

When I got interested in the Star Wars saga again recently, I was exposed to Vader's back story. I found out how he became a villain. I discovered why he was more machine than man. And I became a lot more sympathetic towards him. Hearing his story gave me for compassion for him and helped me understand what had happened to him. 

Why would George Lucas tell a sympathetic story about a villain, someone we are supposed to hate?

Artistic expressions, like books and movies, provide different lenses through which to view our own experiences, and different ways to think about them. A lot of humans seem to need opportunities to do that. 

Maybe George Lucas thought it might be interesting to re-examine a known villain and see why he became that way. 

He said, “I like the idea that the person you thought was the villain is actually the victim, and that the story is really about the villain trying to regain his humanity."

I actually found it not only interesting, but possibly helpful, in thinking about the way the world is and my own role in it. Maybe a movie that fictionalizes how a villain goes bad could help people understand why they made their own bad decisions and why other people do things we believe are horrific. Maybe we could discover if we had something in common with those people and figure out a way to change their behavior. Maybe if we acknowledge our common humanity with other people, it will help us not to commit our own horrific acts. 

Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi, had some ideas too:

“In the first trilogy, the hardest thing Luke could be told in that moment was that Vader was his father. That turns everything on its head for Luke. It takes away all the easy answers, and makes him face the hardest thing, which is that, 'I no longer have just a bad guy I can hate. Suddenly the thing that I thought was the bad guy is actually a part of me.'” 

If, on the other hand, you are convinced what you are doing is right and morally justified, it might be a lot easier to do things that you would otherwise never consider doing. 

Adam Driver, the actor who portrays Kylo Ren, had his own take on Kylo Ren as a villain. He believes that Kylo thinks what the First Order is doing is good for galaxy, so the ends justify the means.

“When they think of their actions as morally justified. It makes them dangerous and unpredictable. There’s no level they won’t go to to accomplish what they’re after. I never thought of the character as an evil person.”

Skeptical? 

You don't have to buy this. If you want to watch all the Star Wars movies as escapist adventures, or Nazi morality plays, you are welcome to. But don't pretend that the makers of the movies didn't think these issues through. They were not looking for easy answers. 

When I watched The Force Awakens, I hated Kylo Ren. I was glad Rey kicked his ass (I still am).

Then I saw the Last Jedi. It got a little bit more complicated. I found out a little more about him, and saw him doing things beside killing people, throwing tantrums and getting dressed down by his boss. I saw him making friends with one of his worst enemies, listening to her sympathetically, and saving her life from his boss. 

I found out that some of the things I had heard about him weren't true. Luke and Han had said that Kylo had assaulted Luke, burned down his Jedi Academy, and killed the other students there. When Kylo prompted Rey to ask Luke more about it, it turned out that Luke had stood over Keylo's bed in the middle of the night and considered killing him. Luke, one of the heroes, turned out to have lied to Rey to make himself look better, and Kylo was telling Rey the truth about what had happened that night. 

It also occurred to me that Luke was unconscious when the Academy was burned and the other students were killed. How would Luke know what happened when he was out of it? Did Kylo kill all of them, or did something a little more complicated happen? I think we may find out in the next installment. I think we may see a lot more of his back story in Episode IX which may make people more sympathetic toward him. 

George Lucas is famous for citing The Hero with A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell as a source of inspiration for Star Wars, which makes me think that these stories can be understood on mythic levels as well as on the level of individual stories.  


“Writing Kylo Ren is just so much fun,” says Johnson “Star Wars boils down to the transition from adolescence into adulthood. That’s the heart of these films and Rey is most obviously the one that hangs on. But it’s also Kylo. In the originals you project entirely onto Luke, while Vader is the scary other — he’s the minotaur. The fascinating thing about Kylo and Rey is that they’re two sides of something. We can all relate to Kylo: to that anger of being in the turmoil of adolescence and figuring out who he’s going to be as a man; dealing with anger and wanting to separate from his family. He’s not Vader — at least, he’s not Vader yet — and that’s something I really wanted to get into.”  


https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/last-jedi-exclusive-rian-johnson-talks-snoke-kylo-ren/  


So in some ways, this is not a Law and Order type of story, but a legend about a hero who transitions from childhood to manhood and how he has to change in order to become a man. The various Star Wars can be considered stories about growing up and growing old. Kylo may be less understandable as a war criminal and more understandable as a rebellious teenager trying to figure out how to separate from his family and be an adult. 

None of the fans will know for sure whether Kylo will end up a villain at the end of EPIX until the movie is released in 2019. Until then, however, I invite you to consider the many different ways of looking at both Star Wars and Kylo Ren, and not take these stories too literally.


End file.
